Michele Tafoya is no stranger to controversy as to whether made of whole cloth and didn’t even really include or overlook her when she was too cozy in her part-time job working for some of the NFL’s worst people, or entirely on her own by showing up and campaigning on cable news white racist politics.
The latter should probably make Saturday night less surprising, but no less silly.
Tafoya took the time to tweet with her own fingers on an iPad what might be the dumbest televised sporting event complaint in the history of televised sporting event complaints.
Shohei Ohtani became the third Japanese player to achieve it 100 young professionals in Major League Baseball on Saturday in the Angels’ 9-1 win over the A’s. And he hit the shit out of the ball for the number 100.
If you want Technical specifications In “Blow the Shit Out of the Ball,” it’s 110.1 mph at a 22-degree launch angle for a 418-foot homer. It’s the third hardest ball Ohtani has hit this season, behind only a ground-rule double in front of Jose Urquidy and a line drive Xander Bogaerts grabbed it in Fenway Park.
Ohtani is the reigning American League MVP, and indeed it was during this series in Boston that he began to recover from a slow start. In his last nine games, Ohtani hit .297 (11 to 37) on three of his seven home runs — a year after he hit 46 Dingers.
If the Angels broadcast hadn’t talked about Ohtani it might have been understandable as it was a 9-1 game, but on the night he hit a historic milestone it’s also pretty obvious why, especially during one Blowouts, announcer would continue to talk about a unique talent who is the most magnetic character in baseball. Ohtani connects with American fans without speaking more than a few words of English publicly, and not talking about him would be the kind of misconduct we typically associate with baseball broadcasts.
Unless, of course, there’s a reason you don’t want to hear from Ohtani … and if you’re friends with Tucker Carlson and co-chair of a Republican gubernatorial campaign in Minnesota, it’s not too hard to guess what the reason is, now , is it?
And why would she tag Ohtani in her tweet? So he could see she’s a xenophobic piece of shit? Shohei Ohtani doesn’t need to know who American football’s shabby sideline reporter is, let alone what she’s tweeting.
That’s why he’s not even on Twitter. Tafoya tagged a Johannes Vermeer fan from Japan who last tweeted in 2014 and, according to Google Translate, mostly seems confused about how to use a computer. It’s literally a lot of tech support questions. But at least that person isn’t going to wake up with thousands of notifications because some stupid lady in the United States can’t handle someone who isn’t white and is from another country, is good at baseball.
